Monthly Archives: January 2015

A little snippet from the WIP, where a Bank – or its minion – has swindled two retired little old ladies out of their life savings. Unfortunately they are retired fertility goddesses, and have called on the services of the redoubtable PI Bolg to get their money back or at least release a large fly agaric maddened berserker with a double headed axe in the Bank…

….

Instead, armed with a little knowledge – always a dangerous thing, and without my Glock, or even a suitable double bladed axe — they have metal detectors — I went to the bank.

The woman at reception, when I got to the head of the queue, looked down on me. I’m used to that, at my height, even with the high heels and latex mask. None-the less, coming from a bank employee it could possibly have made me little more gruff than usual. “I want see a Mr Philip Dally. About an investment product.”

“Do you have an appointment?”
“Yes.” I have been given quite a lot, and never returned any. Royal ones too, and they’re supposed to last better. I was appointed holder of the royal trousers once, but only once.

She frowned at her screen. “I don’t have a record of it. What is your name please?”

“Dickson.” I’d been told there were a lot of them, and in a way we all are.

She shook her head. “Sorry. You can’t see Mr. Dally without an appointment.” She sounded very pleased about that.

“But my friend Mr. Jasmin” – I had the Vice President (Investments) name from the ever informative internet – “assured me he would see to it that I got an appointment.”

That plainly was a different matter entirely. “I’ll just see if he’s free, Mr Dickson.”

And indeed, he was. How surprising. I was escorted up to his office.

Given the timing – and the night before, he was drinking coffee and trying to look awake and enthusiastic. He failed at both. Poor fellow looked as if he could use a purge, so I helped him along in that direction. They scan you for firearms, but not rapid and violent laxatives. Fintan had needed elephant dung in a hurry at one stage of some of his experiments, and had run a little batch of this stuff up. It had almost destroyed the circus I’d been working at, at the time. I kept some for other people’s emergencies.

A little misdirection, a few minutes small talk about Mr. Jasmin and our acquaintanceship at the Country Club and wonders of hunting golfs together, a pastime that Dally seemed to envy, and the vast amounts of money coming out of my real-estate venture… and an expression of extreme distress suddenly delightfully enlivened his beautifully shaven and rather pallid face. It was a thing of joy that I was sorry not to record for my clients. It wasn’t quite as devastating as a berserker with an axe that Gersemi had wished for, although I had a feeling Dally’s underwear might not agree with me.